'The wedding will give rise to some of the most obsequious royal bum-licking ever on TV'
I've witnessed the shape of TV in 2011. It's right royally silly. In the Lorraine Show studio last week, TV chef Ed Baines is mashing up spready cheese and bacon bits before stuffing it in ready-roll vol-au-vent cases. "So, Ed," says Lorraine, cruising in auto-cheery mode, "This could be the kind of nibble the royal couple might have on their big day?!" "Could be!" says Ed. Lorraine points at a pile of chocolate cupcakes so vividly iced Amy Childs wouldn't tolerate them at an Essex Penazzle evening. "Here's a cake we thought Wills and Kate might go for!" Lorraine says. What a spread!
Until then I'd never seen Prince Albert of Monaco as a meat paste bap or cheesy football kind of man, but in this new world of flagrant conjecture, my brain's relaxing into it. On a rival channel, the bloke who taught Kate Middleton grade one piano 17 years ago is concluding, "She prefered sport, really"; meanwhile, a brunette called Louise Lynn is proclaiming herself Britain's foremost Kate Middleton lookalike. The only way Louise will be mistaken for Kate is if she waits in the doorway of Moorfields Eye Hospital, ambushing cataract patients. Expect to see much, much more of these people.
Like aristo Ben from Big Brother 11, for example, the one with the Lady Di bouffant; prepare for lots more of him. Ben went to St Andrews with Kate and Will and is willing, for a small fee, to recall the couple walking "to" lectures, walking "back" from lectures and sometimes even shopping in a supermarket. Ben hasn't revealed what they bought, but I'm guessing Jus-Rol vol-au-vent pastry, Primula cheese, bacon bits and conditioner for Kate's lovely hair, which uni friends now remember as the loveliest, most fragrant hair ever grown out of a head in the whole of Christendom.
Be sure this wedding next April will give rise to some of the most obsequious and gag reflex-testing royal bum-licking by sources close to the couple, all jockeying for power, ever permitted on TV since New Labour. Because Kate wasn't just a pretty girl at college, as Jules Knight from Blake will be recalling on ITV2 every week from now until next summer – she was the prettiest girl in the whole of St Andrews. Cue stock shots of Kate at a fashion show in a see-though net frock, showing her pants, with a voiceover by Jules, Ben or close friend Jessica Kay remembering this night with the breathless wonder one reserves for a child's first steps. Cue the sounds of TV runners poking awake Princess Di's designers David and Elizabeth Emanuel, who've been in cryogenic sleep for 20 years but are now back in demand to create TV content about Kate's potential dress, which they could be asked to design but won't, because the last time they did they invented something so vast it could have been chucked over the Albert Hall as winter insulation.
Whatever Kate wears now will be watched carefully by Hollywood star Anne Hathaway, already Saturday Night Live's go-to girl for a prim Middleton impression. SNL's first skit appeared to portray our beloved Prince Philip (played by Bill Hader) as a crass, sweary social liability. "When it comes to stuff at the palace," the Queen tells Kate, "don't be asking questions like, 'Where did you get this vase? Or, 'Where's that throne from?' Cos chances are we nicked it."
Back in the UK, in the absence of cutting satire, we have instead ITV's Tom Bradby, the hottest name in British royal reporting, giving us a glimpse of the real royals. Tom won the exclusive interview with Will and Kate post-engagement. The one where they stood side-by-side showing the very same ring Di and Charles showed in 1981, saying the same types of things about love the nation accepted as fact once before. Tom's wife Claudia used to work designing jewellery with Kate at Jigsaw, in the little job Kate held down four days a week, before it all became too much for her. But now Kate's going to be Queen, and Tom's going to be a star, and I'm going to sit on my arse writing about it. So, to be honest, it's worked out rather well for all of us …
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